haerwu

Cross compilation of entire distributions requires such distributions to be prepated for it. Which is not a case when you use OpenEmbedded/Yocto or Buildroot to build it. But it gets complicated with distributions which are built natively.

Fedora does not have a way to cross compile packages. The only cross compiler available in repositories is bare-metal one. You can use it to build firmware (EDK2, U-Boot) or Linux kernel. But nothing more.

Then there is the other problem: testing. What is a point of successful build if it does not work on target systems? Part of each Fedora build is running testsuite (if packaged software has any). You should not run it in QEMU so each cross-build would need to connect to target system, upload build artifacts and run tests. Overcomplicated.

Native builds allows to test is distribution ready for any kind of use. I use AArch64 desktop daily for almost a year now. But it is not "4core/16GB ram SBC" but rather "server-as-a-desktop" kind (80 cores, 128 GB ram, plenty of PCI-Express lanes). And I build software on, write blog posts, watch movies etc. And can emulate other Fedora architectures to do test builds.

Hardware architecture slow today, can be fast in the future. In 2013 building Qt4 for Fedora/AArch64 took days (we used software emulators). Now it takes 18 minutes.

Because I can.

Is it good enough answer?

I updated blog post after reading comments from Matrix/Slack/Phoronix/HN/Lobster/etc. places.

- mentioned which board had 143 minutes, added info about time on Milk-V Megrez board

- added section 'what we need hw-wise for being in fedora'

- added link to my desktop post to point that it is aarch64, not x86-64

- wording around qemu to show that I use it locally only

Read https://marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/2025/06/20/the-hunt-for-a-... please.

Tool vs Toy.

Depends on how you look at it.

Would you call Threadripper system "a normal build"? For many people they are normal builds because they need more computing power or more PCIe lanes than "normal user" desktop has.

On the other side you have those who pretend to use raspberry/pi 3 as "an Arm desktop" despite only 1GB of ram and 4 sluggish cores.

Those auctions are where we looked at. No answer from seller - probably they did not wanted to deal with sending packages outside of USA.

Apple Mac you can buy now will have M3 or M4 cpu. While Asahi team supports only M1 and M2 families.

So you cannot run Linux natively on currently-in-store Mac hardware.

And raspberry/pi is a toy. Without any good support in mainline Linux.

"claims" is very good summary

In my previous post https://marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/2025/06/20/the-hunt-for-a-... I wrote:

There were “Arm V9” systems before it, so it was not “World’s First”. There were several blobs needed to run it, so it was not “Open Source”.

Apple Mx family of cpus supports only 4k and 16k page sizes. There is no way to run 64k binaries there without emulating whole cpu.

@lisper because Q32 is more expensive than Q64 and I got offer for Q80 one.

Amount of options for sensible AArch64 hardware is too small (or too expensive).

OK, I tend to ignore HN but got link to this post from several people so will go and comment.

When you look at https://gpages.juszkiewicz.com.pl/arm-socs-table/arm-socs.ht... table then you can see that in Snapdragon 8xx series the first "ARM cores out of shelf" was 888 in 2020.

865 (2019) has Cortex-A77 + Kryo 4xx Silver 888 (2002) uses Cortex-X1 + Cortex-A78 + Cortex-A55 cores

Note that whole blog is about Arm architectures and platforms rather than x86(-64) ones.

Qualcomm 8cx cpu is based on smartphone one but optimized for laptop use.

If your work is all non-x86 then having powerful non-x86 box handy helps a lot.

AArch64 servers tend to have 10G (or faster) SFP+ ports rather than 1GbE.

Extra PCIe x1 slot on mainboard would be fine instead of on-board audio.

All ARM Servers need to be SBBR compliant. Which means UEFI+ACPI so each Linux distro just boots and works.

SBC market is completely different thing. But that blog post was not about them.

Those workstations use server motherboards.